] 16 REPORT— 1876. 



To return to our section. Here and there this stalagmite rises into small 

 bosses, showing that its existence was mainly owing to the dripping of water 

 from the roof. It forms a kind of dotted line of demarcation between the 

 dark clay above and the layer next to be described beneath. 



The bed beneath this stalagmite is somewhat like the dark clay above it in 

 arrangement, but is not of so fine a texture. Its colour is much lighter, a 

 yellowish brown. It is someM'hat sandy, pi'esents on digging a rougher sec- 

 tion than the waxy lustre of the dark clay above, and is more clearly lami- 

 nated, though the laminations in it are wider apart. This clay appears to 

 follow the upper surfaces of the fallen blocks on which it rests, and is rudely 

 parallel with them. "We find that as these blocks rise in successive steps 

 towards the south-west, so this clay rises on them, and covers them con- 

 tinuously at higher and higher levels. 



There is one point about this loM"cr light-brown laminated clay which is 

 of much interest ; channels appear to have been formed in it. ' HoUow 

 troughs occur, which may perhaps be due to its subsidence through chinks 

 in the rocks beneath, or they may have been formed by little streams of 

 water cutting out channels subsequentlj- to the formation of the main mass 

 of it. However they were formed, the thin overlying stalagmit* appears to 

 have made a tliin coating over their walls simultaneously with the like forma- 

 tion on the flatter surfaces between them. The overlying dark waxy clay, 

 ou minute examination, is seen to dip into these cavities sometimes at a con- 

 siderable angle. It is only possible to sec this lamination when the clay is 

 cut with a clean knife ; the spade obliterates the bedding. This arrange- 

 ment of the layers at the sides of the trough would seem to point rather to 

 our first hypothesis of their formation as being the more probable. 



It has been suggested in former reports that the laminated clay which lies 

 above the Hyaiua-bed may possibly be the result of a deposit from glacier 

 water at the time of the ice -sheet, it being now distinctly proved that the 

 animals whose bones occur some distance beneath it existed in that district 

 at a time prior to that cold period. The chief evidences for this last consist 

 of — ( I) the superposition of the boulder-deposits at the entrance of the cave 

 upon the edges of the bone-bed, and (2) the total removal of the remains of 

 these animals from the oj^en ground in those particular areas where direct 

 evidence of the former extension of an ice-sheet exists. 



^,Vc must not forget, however, that further south and east the same 

 animals arc found in the river-gravels under such circumstances as imjDly 

 that a cold period occurred also previous to their ranging through the country, 

 the gravels being of later age than certain glacial beds in the south and east 

 of England. These facts im^jly that the animals whose bones are found in 

 the lowest known bone-beds in the Victoria Cave lived in this country in 

 the course of a well-raarked interval between two periods of extreme cold, 

 and that the earlier left traces of its effects further south than the later. It 

 is therefore within the limits of possibility that this lower waxy laminated 

 clay is a representative in time of some of the earlier glacial beds of the 

 south-east of England. The subject, however, is an extremely wide one, 

 and our present knowledge of the age and succession of the drifts must 

 receive many additions before such an hypothesis can be either proved or 

 disproved. 



Bronze Objects. — The Eomano-Celtic layer is probably now completely 

 eliminated from Chamber A. That portion of the present large entrance- 

 hall which we used to call Chamber D was apparently never occupied by 

 the folk who used the bronze articles. Chamber B,'that to the left of 



